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Figure 1.
Yaka diviner Kyuulu tapping on his slit-gong (n-kookwangoombu)
at onset of a divinatory consultation, village of Yibeengala, northern
Kwaango region, southwest Zaire, August 23, 1974.
Photo by René Devisch. |
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hold in their closed fists. When the genuineness of his calling to divinership has been recognized by well-reputed senior diviners and elders and by his residential group, the diviner-to-be undergoes initiation. For nine months under the direction of a "senior diviner who is mothering him" (ngula ngaanga), this initiation consolidates the diviner's heightened sensory capacity to perceive and penetrate the concealed. From the beginning of his initiation, people consult his oracle, since they are convinced that the capacity for divination is then at its most powerful. With his initiation, his illness practically disappears, and he becomes a member of a group apart, with its special ways of sitting, eating, washing, and speaking, standing outside all ordinary social categories. At the end of his initiation, he may travel in the neighborhood or |
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